Dr. Marta was seated on a stool in the Recovery Room writing her notes on a patient just transferred from the Delivery Room. Suddenly, she heard a sound coming from the unlit Labor Room-A just across the hall. The air was silent, empty,...
The gunfire echoed along the ship’s corridor. Kuya One, who was known only by his call sign, welcomed the sound this time, as it was an indication that some of his men were still alive. He sadly realized that their movement, at least...
I’ll begin with a crude reduction of La Bruyere’s opening paragraph from Les Characteres: Nothing here is meant to be the first of its kind. This thing itself is a pale and conflated imitation of what I found most resonant in the aphorisms...
No one, least of all her schoolmates at St. Celestina’s Academy, would have pictured Chona Laon Badoy as the Mayor of San Semilla in Negros Occidental. Chona herself had never aspired for political office, but only to public service, as her in-laws loftily...
They connived with the dark shadows, the family who lived in a house full of glass windows and graven saints. Toraja invited me to their family dinner in Baguio City to commemorate their matriarch’s third death anniversary. That morning, five black pigs were...
The train slowed down. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. A middle-aged lady wearing a double-breasted coat told him his stop was near. He sat up from his bunk and readied his 500L backpack, messenger bag, thermal jacket, bonnet, and gloves. The man...